28,000 Beads Later, a Gown for $1 Million
Want to look like a million? Gildas--whose bead-paved gowns have swept around town on the likes of Supervisor Harriett M. Wieder and developer Kathryn Thompson--is betting someone does.
Between custom designs for clients, Gildas is busy-busy whipping up a little flesh-tone number frosted with 28,000 crystal and rhinestone beads. Price tag: $1 million.
“It’s just something I want to do,” said Paris-born Gildas--Gigi, for short--who was a dancer in Las Vegas before coming to the county five years ago.
“I’ve always wanted to create a dress that looked like a jewel, with no fabric showing,” he said.
Now the silk chiffon that someday will become a Size 8 is stretched across a loom in the designer’s studio. And each day, when he has time, Gildas painstakingly crochets the diamond-like beads to the fabric. So far, more than 10,000 of the breathtaking sparklers are in place.
“When it is finished,” Gildas said, in his thicker-than- bernaise -sauce accent, “it will look like a broken stained-glass window.”
Completion date? “Hmmmmm. Sometime in April.”
And if the glamour-gown doesn’t sell? “Well then, perhaps I’ll settle for $850,000.”
Meanwhile, some of the county’s consistently chic are getting by for far less. Are they enjoying it more?
Well, they looked ecstatic in basic black at the opening, last weekend, of Opera Pacific’s “Die Fledermaus” at the Performing Arts Center:
Lois Driggs Aldrin: Enjoying one of her first social appearances in the county since she married astronaut Buzz Aldrin in Phoenix on Valentine’s Day, she wore a beaded black silk dress bought last fall at Capriccio, “The Amen Wardy of Scottsdale,” she whispered.
She prefers to wear either black or white (as in wedding dress) because “those colors provide drama and contrast. Buzz loves both.”
Jewel Plummer Cobb: The president of Cal State Fullerton wore black silk pants, matching camisole and a gold lame jacket.
“I like a look that is relaxed, elegant and casual,” she said. “In a very hectic life, it’s nice to be able to change into something comfortable.”
With “pantemonium” predicted for Paris this fall, Cobb is ahead of the trend. “I’ve always enjoyed pants. They are a more active kind of thing. You feel like you can do things when you’re wearing them.”
Cobb said her fashion style tends to be conservative--”I never wear pants to school”--but in certain situations she likes to dress as “glamorously as I can.”
Kit Toth: The brunette socialite, who aches to play Scarlett O’Hara in the sequel to “Gone With the Wind,” chose ruffly black silk taffeta for her date at the Center.
“I feel very feminine, flirty and French in it,” said Toth, of Newport Beach.
For extra panache, Toth wore a necklace bought at Chanel in Paris.
“I love black. It’s always appropriate, offers a kind of low-key sophistication, a subtle sexiness.”
Regina McGrath: The stunning blonde who helps run McGrath Co., a commercial real estate brokerage firm in Laguna Beach, is a new face on the county social scene.
For “Die Fledermaus,” she wore black velvet embroidered with thousands of pearls.
“I’ve never had such a reaction to a dress in my life,” McGrath said. “Complete strangers have stopped me to comment on how gorgeous the dress is. I feel terrific in it. It’s glamorous and exciting.”
Strutting in pearls has its perils, however. “I can’t walk too fast, because the strings of pearls crash into each other, and I start sounding like chimes,” she said.
Also, there was a pearl or two reclining in McGrath’s seat at the end of the performance. “I just left them there for the next person to wonder about,” she said with a giggle.
